Mules mosey through Stockton

Yet the sight of three mules hoofing along surprised Stockton commuters Tuesday morning, as a migrating muleteer wrangled his beasts straight through the heart of the city.

“This is our life,” said John Sears, 67. “Living outside and enjoying the surroundings.”

Sears is a philosopher mule-man who believes freedom requires wide open spaces. Trails, not roads. And certainly not cars, a part of the man-made world spoiling American life.

“The future of being locked up in a machine for your life is no future at all,” said Sears, “and people aren’t even thinking about it.”

People on social media began posting sightings of Sears leading his pack train north on a Pershing Avenue sidewalk by Victory Park around 8 a.m.

Catching up, I walked a ways with Sears. The mules clopped peaceably behind us. They bore saddlebags, presumably filled with Sears’ stuff. Though maybe it was their stuff.

A grizzled guy dusted with trail dirt, Sears said he has no fixed address. “I live like other people in the past,” he said. “Go north summers, south in the winter to stay warm.”

Sears said he is up from the San Diego area on his current constitutional. He overnighted outside Tracy. Sears seeks spots where he can bed down and graze his mules.

He introduced me to Little Girl, 26, Lady, 36, and a one-eyed youngster named Hoo dee doo that somebody gave him in Norco, though he didn’t really want it.

“I been on the road with these mules for 31 years,” Sears said. “I been all over the western United States.”

Drivers did double-takes, pulled over and snapped photos as Sears ambled along, telling his story.

Born in the Bay Area, Sears worked for years as an itinerant tree pruner. On his free time he hiked wilderness. Occasionally he had to yield the trail to pack trains.

“One day I thought, ‘You ought to get a mule and let him carry the weight for you,’” Sears recalled. “That’s how it got started. One thing led to the next …”

Sears says he covers between five to 20 miles a day. He prefers trails. But trails are scarce — a scandal, to his way of thinking. The monopoly of highways and vehicles confined to them means people cannot choose the wide-ranging freedom of open space.

“That’s the whole point,” he said. “People aren’t making a choice because they don’t have a choice.” But, “We can’t be happy, healthy human beings without a relationship with nature.”

That’s Sears’ cause. He stops at city halls to ask leaders to stop the spread of the sprawling “megatropolis” devouring nature. He stopped at Stockton’s City Hall on Monday night. It was closed.

When traversing a city, Sears sometimes spies an opportune untended lawn his mules can munch. With owners’ consent, he adds. Sears sometimes begs water on their behalf.

“They do very well,” he said. That’s why I got ’em. They’re very hardy and tough.”

As for Sears, his needs are met by his Social Security debit card, he says.

When last seen, Sears and his plodding pack were heading north towards Lower Sacramento Road. When he reaches the capital, Sears wants a word with lawmakers.

“The car was a good idea when it first came out,” Sears said. “But now it’s a bad idea. It needs to be curtailed.”

Passing motorist Doug Miller was one of the many people who whipped out a camera and marveled as the mules moseyed by.

“I haven’t seen that since I left Missouri,” Miller said.

— Contact columnist Michael Fitzgerald at (209) 546-8270 or michaelf@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/fitzgeraldblog and on Twitter @Stocktonopolis.